Thought experiment: Balance changes you would make in the Mass Effect Trilogy

For ME1 it's hard to say. I found the game mechanics a bit hard to get used to, and the levels themselves are so unbalanced that I have a hard time separating mechanics vs. level design.

For ME2 I have a clearer picture. I have always felt the different classes have very uneven access to a native disabling power with short (3 second) cooldown. Also, these powers should have shorter cooldowns on squad mates (6 seconds).

Soldier: Concussive Shot should have a 3 second cool down, 6 seconds on squad mates.

Infiltrator: Replace AI Hacking with native Neural Shock, which should also briefly disable synthetics. 6 second cooldown on Mordin.

Vanguard: already has Pull, no change needed. But reduce squadmate cooldowns to 6 sec.

Sentinel: Cryo Blast should have 3 second cooldown. Increase Mordin's to 6 seconds, and eliminate 4.5 sec cooldown at level 10.

Adept: already has 2 excellent short cool own powers: Pull & Throw, no change needed. But reduce squad mate cooldowns to 6 sec.

Engineer: needs two short cool down powers, only has one (Drone). Cryo Blast should have 3 second cooldown (see above). Decrease drone on squadmates to 12 seconds.

For ME3 it's hard to suggest balance changes since everything feels so overpowered when fully leveled up.  Maybe decrease overall power creep and judge from there?  Also, seems like a lot of useless extraneous powers, maybe just get rid of them and have multiple squad mates with the same (good) powers?

I have been trying to figure out how to rebalance Fortification, Geth Shield Boost, and Barrier in Mass Effect 2, but it seems to require -- at least in part -- some fundamental redesigning of class passive cooldown bonuses. This also affects Sentinel's Tech Armor Let me explain.

Fortification, Geth Shield Boost, Barrier, and Tech Armor all have a base 12-second cooldown for Shepard. All classes except Soldier have cooldown bonuses in their passive talent that apply to all powers. Max possible cooldown bonuses from passive talents:
- Sentinel: 30%
- Engineer: 20%
- Adept: 20%
- Infiltrator: 15%
- Vanguard: 15%
- Soldier: 0%

Tech and Biotic powers can get an additional +20% cooldown with research upgrades, after researching three tech/biotic damage upgrades.

This means that Sentinel can get Geth Shield Boost, and Barrier down to 6 second cooldown, but it already has Tech Armor which can do the same thing (restore shields) but with an added benefit. Engineer and Adept is next closest cooldown at 7.2 seconds, Infiltrator and Vanguard at 7.8 seconds, and then Soldier at 9.6 seconds. No reason to take Fortification.

So I think the Sentinel with Tech Armor shows that a max cooldown of 6 seconds is fairly balanced for these powers. We can work backwards from there and do some tweaking later. So how do we make it so each power or class can achieve 6 second cooldowns with these powers? A few possibilities:
1. Change each class passive so each class can get the same cooldown bonuses, and then add combat power damage, duration, and cooldown research upgrades.
2. Change existing class passive bonuses (and power base cooldowns) so they are specific to biotic, tech, and/or combat, fitting to each class. This is my preferred method, as it allows us to skew each class passive a bit more toward tech or biotic.

So going from method 2, the game specifically provides research upgrades for tech and biotic talents, not combat/ammo talents. I actually think this is fine.
So going from this:
1. Change Sentinel cooldown bonuses so they are specific to tech and biotic
2. Change Engineer and Infiltrator cooldown bonuses so they are specific to tech
3. Change Adept and Vanguard cooldown bonuses so they are specific to biotic

Next, what should be the max tech and biotic cooldown? Currently it is Sentinel with +50% with max passive cooldown and research upgrades. Next is Adept and Engineer at +40%. So should the max be +50% or +40%. I actually think it should be +40%, not +50%.

So here are my proposed basic redesigns:
1. Change Sentinel passive so it provides only tech and biotic cooldown bonuses. Tech and biotic cooldown at +10% at rank 3. Add +10% (total +20%) tech cooldown for rank 4 Raider. Add +10% (total +20%) biotic cooldown for rank 4 Guardian.
2. Change Engineer passive so it provides only tech cooldown bonuses.
3. Change Adept passive so it provides only biotic cooldown bonuses.
4. Change Vanguard so it provides only biotic cooldown bonuses. Biotic cooldown and weapon damage at +10% at rank 3. Add +10% (total +20%) biotic cooldown for rank 4 Champion. Rank 4 Destroyer can have +10% weapon damage (total +20%).
5. Change Infiltrator so it provides only tech cooldown bonuses. Tech cooldown and weapon damage at +10% at rank 3. Add +10% (total +20%) tech cooldown for rank 4 Champion. Rank 4 Destroyer can have +10% weapon damage (total +20%).
6. Change Soldier passive to provide +20% weapon damage at rank 4.
7. Change Tech Armor from a tech power to a combat power, then change its cooldown to 6 seconds. With the previous changes, it is now always a 6-second cooldown.
8. Change Fortification cooldown to 6 seconds. With the previous changes, it will always be 6 seconds on every class.
9. Change Barrier and Geth Shield Boost base cooldown on Shepard to either:
- 10 seconds, so it can be max 6-second cooldown on all classes. But that may have a side effect where you would then always take Fortification since it pretty much does the same thing as Barrier or Geth Shield Boost without needing specific bonuses.
- 8 seconds, so it can have a max 4.8-second cooldown on all non-Soldier classes. Or is this too short a cooldown?

Yes, I totally agree. I think another problem is that the overall power in SP ME3 is so high that anything you cast on the enemy more or less works. Play style is largely defined by what you hold back from doing in order to do something else. You don't get that same sense (as in ME2) when a certain combination of synergistic elements really clicks, allowing them to become greater than a sum of their parts.

On the smaller end and porting a change the other way, I liked how in ME3 Energy Drain also worked on barriers. So taking that back to ME2 would be nice.

The first thing that comes to mind is the Biotic Charge + Nova synergy from ME3. It's a fun way to play but is definitely overpowered. It works so well that it shifted the playstyle of the Vanguard from "high risk/high reward" in ME2 to "low risk/high reward" in ME3.

In ME2, the cooldown penalties are longer and the only means to restore your barrier is by seeking cover - which makes the Vanguard play a strategic play (assign your squad to cover, pick your target, identify where you can run to cover, etc), i.e. you can't just rush in blindly.

In ME3, the Vanguard play is reduced to 1) Biotic charge 2) Nova 3) repeat

The change I would suggest is to either increase the cooldown penalty or break the synergy between the two powers.

Unpopular opinion: I would drop the Nova power entirely (or move it to another class) and give the Vanguard another power that allows phasing through objects and traversing the battlefield. The biotic charge would be the offensive power and a defensive strafe would be the defensive power. I believe Andromeda had a strafe that allowed you to phase through matter.

You've made some great points. Technically there is no cooldown on Nova - it can be used as long as you have barriers, but I get where you're going.

Biotic charges consumes both the cooldown timer and barriers.
Nova only consumes barriers.
Perhaps the fix might be to also require Nova to be tied to the cooldown penalty as well? Either way, we have to break the synergy that allows one power to "refuel" the other and thus eliminate the charge+nova spam.

I like the idea of bringing back the bullet time from ME2 following a charge.

I would be in favor of removing the new class-specific powers added in ME3. Vanguard and Engineer got interesting new powers -- Nova and Sentry Turret -- while every other class got 'grenade'. However, that has nothing to do with balance whatsoever.

Maybe. But I think the original intent of Nova was to give Vanguards a AOE attack at the location of the charge target. If you give it a cooldown*, the player will be in the same cooldown state following the Charge + Nova as they would be following a regular Charge. Either way they have their shotgun. So the choice would be between 1) having no shields, but getting a AOE attack that staggers/strips multiple enemies or 2) having full shields and more mobile enemies. I can imagine many situation where I'd rather have the former as an option, or visa-versa. To me, good gameplay mechanics give you tactical options that are better than others in certain situations, not OP powers (like Charge-Nova spam) that are almost always better than any other option. (*by cooldown I mean for other powers following the use of Nova. You would still be able to fire Nova on cooldown, using up all your shields).


ME3 seems to have a much shorter shield gate than ME2, which makes maneuvering in the open much more difficult in general. That's especially frustrating given the number of grenades encouraging you to move out of cover! So one possible solution might be to bring back the longer shield gate, and get rid of the Nova immunity altogether. If you half-blast you have shields left, and can take some damage before you hit the shield gate. If you full-blast you break shields and only get a brief window of immunity due to the gate.  

I don't think anyone at Bioware reads here, but I could be absolutely wrong.

I seem to remember sometime after the migration from the BSN that one of the ME devs mentioned these forums existed but it didn't sound like that they visited them if I recall. I'd love for them to do so. I think these forums are better than the BSN was in terms of toxicity.

^ That reminds me: All Hail Caesar for preserving this information from BSN, and making it available to the community! I am sure it was a TON of work, and hope everyone appreciates it!

Anyway, yes, I totally agree that adjusting the shield gate in ME3 would have major implications for other powers. Though I am guessing after making appropriate adjustments, it might lead to overall balance improvements for all classes.

One fundamental problem with a 0.1 s shield gate is that this is shorter than human reaction time, so is almost like not having one. This means that for expert players on Insanity, aggressive play requires eating into the health pool almost all the time. While you can certainly play this way, it is generally annoying, both in terms of visual animations & sound effects, but also constant management of health (which in ME3 is a non-renewable resource). In general I don't think the game mechanics should be designed to subliminally encourage players to stay in cover more.

A longer shield gate basically says "If you can consistently remain aware of your surroundings, control enemies, protect yourself, or maneuver quickly enough, the game will not intentionally punish you with degraded vision and hearing for every small mistake that you make." It remains a hard challenge to stay alive, but the time you are alive is more enjoyable!

Sure, that makes sense. Basically they wanted to get rid of the shield gate for continuous fire, while not allowing one-shot sniper deaths.

From what I have read, human decision latency for single tasks spans 0.77 to 1.0 seconds, depending on task and age. So a shield gate of 1 second at all difficulty levels (as in ME2) actually makes a lot of sense to me. I'd rather have increased difficulty come from other sources, such as juggling more, harder-to-kill enemies at one time (stressing CC skills), rather than Shep being more afflicted by fog of war. Harder difficulties should be more challenging and fun for skilled players (not more challenging and annoying!).

In general I find ME3 Insanity to be a cake walk (difficulty wise) compared to ME2 Insanity. And yet, despite feeling less challenged in ME3, I also feel like I take more health damage and suffer a lot more fog of war. So to me the shield gate is less an issue of fairness and balance, it's more of a game-design issue.

I don't think the game benefits from a health gate (should be zero on harder difficulties). If you are on health, you should be vulnerable to being one-shotted by snipers! But I am OK with ME3's partial return to non-renewable health.  Actually I think their use of sub-bars (that only allow partial health regeneration) is a clever mechanic that nicely balances the convenience of health regeneration vs. the player suffering a resource penalty for taking health damage.